How to customize background color of a table column?

It's probably better (makes more readable code, and better separation of concerns) to just set a style class on your TableCell, then actually define the styles in an external style sheet.

Something like:

@Override
public void updateItem(Object item, boolean empty) {
     super.updateItem(item, empty);
     setText(item.toString());
     getStyleClass().add("special-table-column");
}

and then in an external style sheet

.special-table-column {
     -fx-background-color: -fx-focus-color, -fx-cell-focus-inner-border, -fx-selection-bar ;
     -fx-padding: 0 3 0 0 ;
     -fx-alignment: center-right ;
}

Obviously you can replace "special-table-column" with something that logically represents what you're doing.

In the updateItem call, first do a contains check before adding the style class.

if (!getStyleClass().contains("special-table-column")) {

  getStyleClass().add("special-table-column");

}

updateItem can be called many times for a single cell, so if you keep adding style classes each time updateItem is called, you will end up with a memory leak (and possibly other undesirable consequences).

Yes, good call.